


Let Me Love You

by ChloeWeird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (Not Stiles and Derek), Anal Sex, Break Up, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Future Fic, Getting Together, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChloeWeird/pseuds/ChloeWeird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his break up, Stiles runs straight to Derek for comfort, and he starts to wonder if he should have been there from the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me Love You

Stiles dropped his duffel bag and rolled his shoulder now that it was free of the weight that had dragged it down since he’d left the bus station. He tilted his head to the side, feeling the stretch of tense muscle. When the burn subsided, he stood upright again, only to lean heavily against the metal door of the loft. He let out a long breath, unsurprised by its shakiness. 

This day, he thought, tiredly. Jesus, this whole _month_. They’d both been too long. It was only 10AM and he felt like he’d been conscious for a week. He was exhausted in a way that simply sleeping couldn't fix. He’d been getting plenty of that. It’d taken years, but he’d finally trained his body and his brain to let go of stress when he laid his head down, and shut off instantly. This skill had saved him on long car trips and noisy nights in the dorms, but he’d never appreciated it more than these past few weeks. To be short of REM sleep on top of the bullshit he’d been dealing with? He didn’t think he’d have been able to carry on as long as he had. 

Grimacing, and squeezing his eyes shut, he thudded his head against the door again, not trying to knock some sense into himself, just...tired of thinking like that. The door shuddered and echoed with the soft blow. He was _fine_. He’d dealt with things way more fucking dire than a year long relationship crumbling into dust. The timing had been absolute shit, yeah, but he’d studied for and totally aced tests through worse. It was just that before...those things that had kept him from reading his notes on equations he’d already had mostly memorized, the witches and wendigos and, of course, the werewolves...he’d had someone else to fight his battles with him. He hadn’t been so completely, crushingly alone, in the middle of a city that wasn’t his home, and never would be, even though he’d lived there for almost three years. 

Stiles felt his chest tightening and his throat heating up, but he shook it off, along with the last of the kinks from the cramped seat on the bus. He was home now, not alone in a shoebox of a room in an apartment-style dorm, cramming at all hours so he didn’t have to think about how that room hadn’t always been so empty, and his bed so lonely. He scrubbed his dry eyes to thoroughly get rid of the tears that threatened. He’d cried enough those first few days, he wouldn’t allow himself to do it anymore. It wouldn’t change anything, or help him get over someone he obviously wasn’t meant to be with, even if it was hard to accept, initially. 

He toed off his shoes and left them with his bag next to the door, unconcerned that anyone would trip on them. He was the first of the pack to finish his exams for the year, so none of them were even in Beacon Hills yet. Unless Derek had developed a thriving social life recently and just hadn’t told Stiles, he wouldn’t have to worry. And Derek told Stiles everything.

Facetime was a wonderful thing, Stiles had discovered. Derek hated texting because everything was so ambiguous without inflection, and he always sounded snippy, with his aversion to emojis and his tendency to end sentences with periods. He had a hard enough time with social cues without taking Stiles' easily read facial expressions out of the mix, so they talked face to face instead. Or screen to screen.

In Stiles’ panic that going off to separate colleges was going to break up the pack, he’d gone a little overboard with making sure he kept in contact with people. He’d had a colour coded calendar he’d passed out with appointment times for video calls based on their schedules. The rest of the pack had indulged him for a while, but eventually, they all told him to calm down and enjoy college life. They texted, but they rarely answered his Skype requests.

Derek was the only one who’d never missed an appointment. After Stiles realized that no one was going to be leaving the pack any time soon, he'd figured Derek would get bored of it, but it turned out that they both needed the connection. For Stiles, to dispel some of his homesickness, and for Derek, to make sure he spoke to another living creature at least twice a week.

Stiles reached the bed and crawled over it, grimacing at the stiffness in his legs. He must have been clenching his muscles for the whole ride down, not realizing how much it would suck later on. When he reached the pillows, he lifted up the edge of the comforter and slipped underneath, then, at the last minute, sat up again and took off his shirt, tossing it to the floor to deal with later. He knew these blankets, and knew how hot he was going to get if he didn’t shed at least one layer. 

When he finally sank down into a comfortable position--on his side, with his arm under the cool fabric of the pillowcase--it even hurt to relax. The residual tension he’d been carrying around started to dissipate, leaving jelly-like soreness and an odd, buzzing fatigue. He wouldn’t be able to sleep through it, he was sure, no matter how much he wanted to. He was too wired, and in too familiar yet strange a place to fall back on his method of falling unconscious immediately. He’d challenge anyone to try and meditate when their mind was swirling and unable to settle on anything except their own romantic failure and the warm, sleep-soft source of comfort they’d been waiting weeks to get back to. 

Derek lifted his arm to make room for Stiles to come closer. Stiles abandoned his cotton-stuffed pillow for a human one, gratefully laying his head on the solidness of Derek’s chest. His next breath shuddered out of him as he listened to Derek’s, slow and steady. 

“Sleeping in, lazy?” Stiles asked, trying for teasing, but not quite getting there. 

“Knew you were coming,” Derek replied, gripping Stiles’ shoulder firmly, holding him close enough that they didn’t have to look at each other. “Knew you’d need this.”

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. He stared at his hand where it lay, splayed on Derek’s chest. His thumb twitched while he watched, an involuntary movement. He was calm, cozy, and finally feeling the comfort he’d needed so badly that he could only get from his pack. And here he was, looking at his own fingers and thinking about how they used to lie on someone else’ chest just like they were now. 

And it was weird, but...he thought he would have felt differently about that a few weeks ago, when the wound was still fresh. It would have sent him into another downward spiral of loneliness and regret and anger that could only be fixed by another of the hideously expensive gourmet cupcakes he’d paid an Uber driver to pick up for him because he hadn’t showered in days. It would have been a painful sight, before. Now, it was something he recognized, but he was still sorting out the emotions. There was sadness, sure. He was upset that he’d spent a year getting to a place of that kind of intimacy with a person who hadn’t wanted to make the effort to go further. There was also some nervousness. He and Derek had gotten closer, and they’d relaxed around each other, but even the level of physical closeness they’d reached hadn’t been near this one. It was a bit of a head trip, but a nice one. A summer holiday in Barcelona, maybe, but with a tour guide who lead people down the weirdest streets to get where they were going.

There was also an unexpected feeling of something like...rightness. When he sank into Derek’s side, letting his body mold to fit, the simmering attraction and potential for something more than just friendship reared its buried head. They’d gone through a lot of stages in the years they’d known each other. From mostly enemies to wary allies, to actual friends, with some backtracking and sidesteps along the way. Somewhere in there, Stiles had stopped thinking about Derek as this unattainable older dude with issues and seen him as a man, but not like a dad kind of man. A man like Stiles had just become after moving out and living on his own. But by the time that shift had happened, Stiles was with someone. Finally, after so many years of painful singleness, he’d found someone who liked him, whose weirdness lined up with his. He’d never even considered giving that up just because Derek hadn’t seemed quite so unattainable anymore. 

Now, he wished he’d given it more thought. He could have saved himself a lot of heartache these last few weeks. His eyes started to prickle again. He grunted in annoyance and turned his face more fully into Derek, squeezing his eyes shut. He could feel his eyelashes brush against Derek’s skin. 

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind if you need to cry,” Derek said, softly, but loud enough that Stiles could feel the rumble of his voice through the layers of muscle and skin. Not fabric, though. If he hadn’t noticed how unclothed they both were before, he was exceptionally aware of it now. 

“But I don’t want to,” Stiles said, wincing at the petulant note in his tone. He was over crying, over feeling like he was unloveable, or the only one at fault for the demise of a relationship that had been dissolving from the inside for months. 

“I know. But if you need to.”

Stiles sighed gustily, and felt the puff of his own breath, scented with the burnt bus station coffee he’d chugged for breakfast and the remnants of the soap Derek had used the last time he’d showered. He curled his hand tighter in the sheets over Derek’s waist, imagining that his knuckles were as white as the fabric, but he didn’t look to see. He was too busy inhaling that smell, using it to chase away the recent memory of loving someone else’s. It would probably be a long time before peppermint didn’t send him on a trip to the past. 

Derek’s arm shifted across Stiles’ back and came to rest with his hand gripping Stiles’ elbow, his thumb brushing soothingly across the sharp bone and thin skin. It was a tiny touch, but an anchoring one, and Stiles closed his eyes to focus on it. It drew in his spinning mind that he was still constantly having to re-direct to the present to keep from remembering that, oh yeah, he was a fucking mess. Every pass of Derek’s finger felt like a stroke of his central nervous system, amplified by Stiles’ rapt attention and the novelty of human contact. 

It’d only been three weeks, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be as touch-starved as he was. But he’d discovered he was that kind of boyfriend. Or, rather, he confirmed the suspicion he’d long held that when he found someone who’d consent to date him, he’d cling like a limpet, both literally and metaphorically. Apparently it grated, since Stiles’ arm being shrugged off was the first sign he’d noticed that something was wrong. 

Derek probably felt Stiles tense. His right arm took over elbow-holding duties, and his left swept up Stiles’ ribs, then his shoulders, until he could palm the back of Stiles’ head. The drag of Derek’s skin against Stiles’ was electric, and too much for his exhausted brain to handle, so he re-focused on shutting it off. 

He lost track of how long he stayed there, chasing apathy in the healing silence. Sarcasm was his defense, but he’d always felt things too deeply. If he really was as flippant about life as he liked to let people believe he was, he wouldn’t have been as wrecked and empty as he was three weeks ago when that one drawer in his dresser got emptied out. He was just grateful that he’d been planning on moving out anyway, to spend the summer at home and start fresh in September. He hadn’t planned on refreshing his relationship status at the same time, but that was life. But he’d had his bus ticket booked, a job pushing paper at the station waiting for him and his old room, with its comforting smell of home and safe and the grooves he’d dug in his chair and his bed, aired out and dusted off, to help him get back into his own groove. 

So why hadn’t he gone there right away, he wondered, for the first time since he’d walked off the bus. It hadn’t occurred to him until just then that lots of people might have gone straight home after arriving back in town after a stressful school year and an even more stressful break up. The thought of going somewhere other than the loft hadn’t entered his mind, he realized.

He hadn’t gone to his dad. Or to Scott, whose pull-out couch was a place he’d crashed on in times of emotional turmoil. Why not? They had shoulders he could cry on. (Not that he was crying. He’d moved on from that stage of grief to acceptance. It still sucked, but he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, now that he was finished being dramatic.)

The answer came quicker than the question had. It was because he knew that he needed something from Derek that he couldn't get from either of them. He hadn’t wanted Scott's pity, and righteous indignation, and puppy dog eyes. He hadn’t wanted his dad’s sympathetic arm pats or platitudes about there being plenty of fish in the sea. All he’d wanted, all his legs would carry him toward, was the physical closeness, and quiet, steady support he’d known somewhere in the back of his mind he could only get from Derek. 

Stiles lifted his head, wincing at the audible peeling sound of the skin of his cheek detaching from Derek’s chest. Maybe shirts off wasn’t such a good idea. He propped his chin on Derek’s pec so he could see his face, and felt himself almost smile at Derek’s mildly peeved expression. Stiles’ chin was pointy. So were his knees and elbows, and Derek had complained about them many times before, on pack movie nights when they all piled on the couch and floor together. 

Stiles ignored Derek’s irritation. If there was ever going to be a time when he could get away with jabbing his pointy limbs into Derek, it would be right then, when Derek was fully aware how tough a month he’d had. He was on the upward swing, definitely, but he could still pull the pity card. He wouldn’t have pulled the same card with Scott, he realized. With Scott, he’d always be worried that he’d forget himself, and fail to keep his selfishness in check, and walk all over his best friend in the name of best bro support systems, and not notice until later what a shitty person he was. Derek would keep him in check, no question. Stiles could relax and get away with as much as he could, because Derek wouldn’t let him get away with too much. 

But that made him wonder what he could get away with. Stiles stared at the underside of Derek’s jaw, shadowed with at least a few days growth of stubble, and wanted to bite it. Press teeth marks into the sharp corner where cheek turned into chin and then soothe away the sting. Would Derek let him get away with that? 

Maybe his emotional exhaustion made him bold, or maybe the time was right, while at the same time all wrong, but regardless, Stiles awkwardly scooted and planted his elbows on either side of Derek’s head, then planted his lips on Derek’s mouth. The first kiss was quick, over in a flash. The next one took a while to even get started, since Stiles looked into Derek’s eyes for a few long moments before he dipped his head again. The hush in the apartment was too oppressive for Stiles to open his mouth and ask for permission, so he had to make do with telegraphing his intention so Derek could stop it, if he wanted. 

While he didn’t actually stop it, Derek’s response was less than encouraging, at first. He didn’t kiss Stiles’ back, not really. He just let himself be kissed, participating in the most cursory manner possible. Stiles’ stomach turned in disappointment, and he tensed, intending to get up, get out of the apartment and hop on a plane to Timbuktu until he stopped being face-flamingly embarrassed about making the wrong judgement call. Before he could, Derek’s hand came up to the back of Stiles’ head, reclaiming its spot hugging the curve of his skull through hair that was soft and fine like his mother’s. 

And _yes_ , that was the kiss Stiles had been expecting. Derek took charge, even though his range of motion was a lot more limited than Stiles’, and he made up for his previous non-action in spades. Stiles’ lips remembered what it had been like to kiss someone else’s, because, really, the time since they’d last done it was minuscule, compared to the rest of his life. A blip on the timeline, really, despite how long each day had felt in the week after the breakup. 

It was over too quickly for Stiles' taste. Derek turned his head away and avoided Stiles' seeking mouth while the thinking part of Stiles' brain caught up with the part that could only say _More, please, yes, more of that_. They were both breathing a little quicker than normal, into the short space between their faces. Derek looked into Stiles' eyes, searching for something, some emotion Stiles wasn't sure he was displaying, or supposed to be displaying. Regret? Dishonesty? He had no idea.

"So that happened," Stiles said, his voice croaky from a long bout of disuse. Past Stiles, the Stiles from middle school or his teen years, or even a year or two ago, would probably have waited for Derek to start the conversation. Mindless babble, he could do, But a serious talk about something that mattered to him? He could be patient and close-lipped. He would have waited a long time, because Derek was just as patient. 

Present Stiles, however, was over the bullshit not talking caused. Communication really was key to a relationship, cliché as it sounded, otherwise one person could end up walking out on the other, leaving them blindsided and bruised. Present Stiles was not down for drawing the conversation out, because if it went the way he wanted it to, he very much wanted to continue what they were doing, but if it went another way...he had a plane to catch. 

"Yeah, it did." Derek finally stopped staring into Stiles' eyes like a mindreader, and his gaze skipped across Stiles' tingling lips, to somewhere around his neck, then back up to his eyes. "Should it have?"

"Why not?" 

Derek's voice turned urgent and a little harsh. "I can think of a few reasons."

Stiles could too, but he wanted to hear them from Derek to make sure they were the same ones. 

"Oh yeah? Lay 'em on me." 

Actually, it was Stiles who was doing the laying. It felt odd to be having such an important conversation about a decision to be made while they were chest to chest in Derek’s bed, already having made most of the decision already. Do they start something? Well, it started when Stiles ran straight to Derek after the worst three weeks of his life and crawled right into bed with him. 

"You're 21," Derek said, direct, but also uninformative, as usual. 

"And?" Derek's eyebrows twitched into a frown and Stiles got distracted by them. He smoothed them out with his fingers, then trailed them down the side of Derek's face. Under his fingertips, he felt the change from smooth, ageless werewolf skin to rougher scruff. He passed them across the transition point a few times before Derek's hand pulled his away, keeping it trapped in his strong grip.

"You're younger than me," Derek said to Stiles' fingers. "I should know better."

Stiles scoffed. "What's the age difference? Six years? Seven? That's nothing. I’m legal in every country. I can drink, smoke, gamble, and kill a man with the full sanction of the US army. No stranger would bat an eye if we told them our ages. So what’s the issue? Life experience? You think I’ve had that much less than you? Come on Derek, that’s just insulting."

They've both lived a hell of a lot of life, together and apart. Before they'd ever known each other, they'd both experienced the untimely loss of a family member. In Derek's case, many. And it didn't matter that _only_ Stiles' mother had died, when Derek lost almost his whole family. There was no sliding scale for grief, and they’d both lived enough to understand that. 

Chronologically, they’d known each other for five years, give or take. It was a good chunk of time, all things considered, but still just a small portion of what their lifespan would be, if they both died of old age. Stiles had first cousins back in Poland that he hadn’t talked to in that long. In terms of life lived, though...storms weathered--adversity overcome--it felt like they’d been at each other’s sides--or throats--for whole centuries. 

It was a problem Stiles had discovered when he moved to a new place and had to socialize with people who weren’t his pack. There were smart kids at his school, interesting or funny ones, as well as dumb and short-sighted ones. He’d spotted right away which kids he could get along with, and he was friendly with some of them. But it was hard to relate to other people when their biggest worry was not finding a summer job in the city and having to move back in with their parents for a few months. He had those worries too, the ones that would disappear and be forgotten with time, but if positioned on a scale from one to certain agonizing death, they didn’t even rank. Everyone else’s scale was a little different from his, but Stiles had actually run for his actual life, and stared down literal, tangible death. 

It was a bit difficult to be sympathetic about someone who was _dying_ because their World Religions TA made them read three chapters a week. It made him irrationally annoyed to hear people complaining about how their life was ruined because they didn’t study enough and got a C on a midterm, even though he knew that a bad grade really _was_ the worst thing they could contemplate at that particular time. Stiles had grown out of that kind of hyperbole when his life had actually come close to really being ruined. 

For Derek--who knew all this, who'd encouraged Stiles to interact with his peers despite the chasm that he felt was between them--to suddenly discount all that hard-earned knowledge felt like a hell of a slap in the face. 

“I’ve done all the firsts," Stiles snapped. "First kiss. First drunken mistake. First time living on my own. First heartbreak.” Real heartbreak, too. Whatever disappointment he'd felt after Lydia let him down for the final time hadn't been the same as what he'd been feeling for the last few weeks. “First time letting someone hold me down in a tub of ice water to save someone I loved. What more life experience do you want me to have?” 

"Fine. But it's still not a good idea," Derek said gently, rubbing Stiles' fingers with his thumb to soothe. "It's not the right time. You're--"

"I know what I am." Stiles finally couldn't handle having this discussion lying down. He clambered up and off, but didn't go far, ending up sitting slumped and cross-legged. "I'm a bit of a disaster," he admitted. "But it's taken us this long, so when will the right time be? If we forget this conversation ever happened, then I'll go back to school, and maybe I'll meet someone, or you'll meet someone, or I'll get hit by a bus or something, and with my dying thought, I'll wish we hadn't waited until _the right time_."

Derek stared down at the sheets between them, looking like he really wanted to snatch up Stiles' hand again. "That's a terrible argument," he muttered. 

Stiles felt the need to move another time. He'd been too close before, but now he was too far away. He tipped over and laid his head on the corner of Derek's pillow, not touching, but close enough. "I know," he said, on a mournful sigh. "A solid C minus, I think. Not my best work. I should get points for effort, though, right?" Stiles laid his hand on the top of Derek's forearm, squeezing just hard enough to feel the corded muscle. "And haven't I convinced you?" 

Derek breathed out and it turned into a tiny growl just at the tail-end. His lips pressed into a solid line, but it buckled, into the soft, fond smile that Stiles was so used to. It wasn't the exact same smile as usual, though, it was a little too worried, a little too frustrated. Derek rolled to his side, facing Stiles and brushing the back of his fingers across the Stiles' bare shoulder. Next, he carded them through Stiles' hair, then ran the pad of his thumb over the fading bruises under Stiles' eyes. The kiss seemed like a logical projection of the pattern of tender touches, but that didn't make it any less shocking to be kissing Derek, his friend, who'd always toed the line of their platonic relationship. 

"I just want you to know," Derek said, when the gentle, probing kiss was over, and he'd leaned his forehead against Stiles'. "If you want this to be a one-off, I can do that. After, we can continue as we were. I'll need some time, but I can do it, if you need me too. But if you want it to be more, I want it too. Because you deserve more."

People thought that Derek didn't say much. Even years after he'd mellowed, stopped stalking high school students and lashing out at anyone who tried to strike up a conversation, he had a reputation of being a strong and silent type. It wasn't entirely inaccurate, but while he didn't _talk_ excessively, he could _say_ plenty, and often did. He had a way of speaking Stiles' mind for him, when all Stiles could do was talk around what he really wanted to say, for hours, if he had to. 

"Okay," Stiles said. He didn't have an answer for Derek just yet. Was he really so selfish that he would take what he wanted from Derek, on the excuse that he was going through some emotional upheaval? Yes, he was. At this moment, with Derek's body heat so close, and the sheet draped tantalisingly low on his hips, (False promises, Stiles had felt Derek's sleep pants earlier.) Stiles could be just that selfish. This brief second in time felt so unique, so singular. He didn't think he'd ever be quite so flayed open as he was now, so even though he knew it was a catastrophically bad idea, he couldn't have turned Derek down. 

It wasn't smart of him to close the distance between them. It definitely wasn't smart of him to pull Derek's weight down on top of himself. It was really, really stupid of them to get rid of their clothes, clumsily and slower than it would have been if they'd just stopped touching for just one minute. 

Stiles let Derek lean over him, pushing him into the mattress and blanketing him with his body. Stiles had seen Derek naked before. Hard not to, when Derek turned into a wolf periodically, then back to a human minus the clothes. But those had never been moments when it was appropriate to admire, or even just to look with any intention to really see. So Stiles wished, absently, while he got caught up in the drag and bite of Derek's lips and teeth, that'd he'd had the time to look his fill at Derek's body before he felt it pressed up against himself. Derek's hip bones felt sharp, and Stiles wanted to run his finger along them. Under his hands, Derek's ass felt way more plush than it appeared when it was wrapped up in tight jeans, and Stiles wanted to look at it from the side, and let his mouth water. 

But life hadn't shaken out like that, it seemed, so Stiles tried not to dwell on it, which was made a lot easier by the distracting thrust of Derek's hips into the cradle of Stiles groin. Stiles couldn't see it, but he knew the wetness on the place where his thigh met his hip wasn't from his own dick, so all he could think of, beyond _oh, dear god, this is happening_ , was _oh, dear god, Derek is totally into this_. High on that heady realization, Stiles boldly pushed on Derek's shoulders, and didn't stop until Derek got the message that Stiles wanted him on his back.

Stiles threw his leg over Derek's and planted himself about halfway down Derek's stomach. There was more kissing, more and more, like they were making up for all the perfectly legal kissing they could have been doing if Stiles hadn't gotten distracted by the first pretty face who'd ever gave him the time of day, and assumed it was everlasting true love.

He leaned over and pulled open the top drawer of Derek's nightstand, then dug his hand right to the back and felt--oh, yeah. He found what he was looking for, because Derek was a predictable guy when it came to his basic needs. He kept his toilet paper next to the toilet, his peanut butter next to his bread, and his lube next to a box of tissues, a garbage can, and his big, comfortable bed. Stiles moved Derek's hands where he wanted them--the small of his back. Close enough to help, if he wanted, but not so close that it implied that he had to do all the work--then flicked open the cap of the bottle and coated his fingers liberally. 

Bending over and taking care of things while leaning over a stunned, panting Derek was a bit of a surreal experience. Stiles finally had the time to look at Derek, but he was too busy concentrating on what he was doing and shuddering from the anticipation of the press of something bigger than fingers to really appreciate it. All he could really do was zone out with his gaze fixed somewhere around Derek's lips, until he'd grimaced one too many times from going too fast. Derek took over after that, and Stiles spent some time looking at the ceiling, gusting out breaths to it, and telling it _oh god, oh god, yes, right there._

Given the number of years they'd gone without kissing each other at all, Stiles thought he should have been able to hold out longer before he had to drop down and messily claim Derek's mouth again, but the need tugged him down to his elbows before he'd even had the will to think about fighting it. When it ebbed somewhat, Stiles canted his hips, moved Derek's hands--to his thighs this time--and reached behind himself again. Derek's cock felt huge and scalding in his hand as he guided to his entrance. It was velvet soft and faintly pulsing it was so hard, even though it'd been pretty much neglected up to that point. Stiles sank down slowly, guided by his own searching fingers and Derek's firm grip on on his legs. 

Stiles never managed to get completely swept away by sex. His brain was too busy multi-tasking to ever keep on one track, even when he wouldn't have wished to be anywhere else. He was pretty sure he'd space out and start listing the states in alphabetical order if he was at his best friend's funeral. So it was no surprise to him that he got distracted by inconsequential shit once he started moving and had fallen into a toe-curling, ab-tightening, unhurried pace. 

He noticed the tickle of sweat snaking its irritating way down the middle of his back, and the fact that his ankle was at a weird angle and was probably a few minutes away from falling asleep. His thighs, too, were complaining, and already burning from exertion. Right after Derek surged out of their rhythm and turned Stiles' open-mouthed sigh into a choked-off moan, Stiles had a passing thought that he should remember to turn Derek's fan on before they went to sleep. It was stupid, how unimportant things could pull his focus, but each of them lasted only a second, then he was back in the moment, in his body, burning up from the heat of the bad-idea sex they were having, because he wanted to, because it felt so goddamned good. 

The crest came as sort of a surprise after such a long, delicious build-up. Derek's legs bent behind Stiles, and he took over most of the necessary movement until both of them were limp and stuck together at their fronts by sweat and come. Stiles listed to the side, rolling off ungracefully, then latching onto Derek's side. His skin was too hot and prickled everywhere they were touching, but he couldn't bring himself to pull away. He needed to cling, to keep Derek anchored to him, so Derek didn't start drifting away to give Stiles the space he thought he needed. Stiles didn't need anything of the sort. He wanted to be suffocated by Derek's closeness, and breathe the stifled air of complete dependency. 

It was possible that they'd fucked up, he thought, as he traced the line between Derek's pecs, where his heart was still slowing down, and his lungs still worked harder than normal. If they continued down this road, Stiles would be in the odd position of learning how to be in a new romantic relationship while still unlearning what it was like to be in his last one. They'd probably do all the wrong things, since they started off with the wrongest thing they could've done, but dammit, he'd done all the right things the last time, and it'd still crumbled in his hands before he could even begin to try and salvage anything of it.

But it was getting harder and harder with every minute of shared space to remember why he'd wanted to save it. They'd been happy, he recalled. Stiles _had_ been in love, for whatever that was worth when it was the kind of love that could be described in grand words and poetic phrases, but not by everyday idioms or common tongues. 

He had been in love. He wouldn't have stuck it out longer than a couple of months if he hadn't cared deeply, but the the fact of the matter was that if the apocalypse had started on a random day at the peak of the blush of their new love, Stiles still would have run right back to Beacon Hills without a second thought for anyone else. He would have left whatever they had behind to be with Derek at the end of the world. 

It was easier for Stiles to forgive the sudden and very real heartache he'd felt when he thought about it like that, because the truth must have shown through. Stiles might have tried to convince himself that he was a forever type of guy, but that was only true to a certain point, and that point was his pack. He would stick with his pack forever, anyone else could take their chance that Stiles would peace out at the first sign of danger in his little town. And anyone with half a brain would have known that. It was remarkable, he thought now, that they'd lasted as long as they did, when he was always going to end up here, damaged, messy, and beginning to heal, with Derek's arm tight across his shoulders, and Derek's heart beating strong next to his hand. 

"Stiles," Derek rumbled, turning his head toward Stiles, so that his chin brushed the tips of Stiles' fingers. "I meant it. If you're not ready, we can put this on hold."

It was true. However urgent it had felt, they both had lots of time to spare before they'd be looking back on their youth with regret. They could take the time for Stiles to be sure it wasn't a rebound thing, or an impulse he'd regret. Stiles skimmed his hand across the sturdy chest that he was pressed against, then cupped Derek's jaw, pulling him down for another kiss, slow and deep and full of promise. 

Somehow, Stiles didn't think regret would be a problem.

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know what it is about Ariana Grande that inspires fan fiction in me. This is something like the 4th or 5th idea that's come from belting out one of her songs in the car like a lunatic. 
> 
> Oh, well. Hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to leave comments/kudos if you liked it!


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